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Since the patch, I get disconnected randomly from 1 in 3 games--even when my opponent is clearly winning, so it isn't them ragequitting

I'm pretty sure this has given me a disconnect ratio which explains why I can only gain 2000 BP from people who are several ranks and a hundred thousand BP above me while people who rate similarly to me are gaining 5000+ from beating me

In better news, I may have strayed from the path, but Blue Vegeta is just the most fucking fun. Now that I'm using his tatsu as a mixup rather than for buffering assists, I am getting results with him too.

I basically can't play the game with people unless I want to drive all the way into boston (which I dont) or wait and see if the planned patches fix it for me because I still have eternity search times and no rooms found errors

I basically can't play the game with people unless I want to drive all the way into boston (which I dont) or wait and see if the planned patches fix it for me because I still have eternity search times and no rooms found errors

It's a huge bummer. The group of people I play online with is LOUSY with the "Ring Match is Full" bug. There's one of us who can host with reliability, but he barely plays the game any more. I could at least reliably get world matches before, but it has become a shitshow. Finding matches is easy, but expecting them to finish is like betting on red in roulette.

That 19 characters are tightly clustered is real good.
That claw and Alex are still in the dumpster is lame.

The 9 characters that are on the bad side of the gap definitely suffer from a bunch of different problems, but weak V-Trigger is a big one and a common one. I'm surprised Blanka is in that group though, because he seems not that bad.

Nash really deserves to have a lot of his nerfs undone. I think having a character that is legit slippery to match against the top tiers who are walls that move towards you (e.g. Guile, Abigail), or get in on you seemingly regardless of what you do (e.g. Rashid, Kolin in VT2) would be actually fun.

I'm not sure what would be good buffs for Juri that would make her competitive without being silly, though. She can't be too good when she doesn't have charges, her charged moves can't be too much better than EX moves, but the charged moves still have to be worth the time cost for.

Most of Ken becoming good again is just a function of undoing some of his nerfs and making his other things work consistently.

It isn't just access to a good VT, chars also need a high reward CC button they can throw around fairly safely.

This is true to an extent, but it's not the whole story. A high reward CC button is nice but not required, but a decent VT is. There are top tier characters without great CC buttons like Cammy, Menat, Chun (and to a lesser extent Guile, and he's definitely top tier, or Birdie), but, for example, Cammy can just use cr.hp/cr.mp VTC for the same effect. A high reward CC is just a way of generating offense with a lucky read/out of nothing, but in the same situation pretty much every character has a built-in high-reward, relatively low-risk button through VTC whether it's a beefy heavy that leaves you close and + on block (doesn't even have to CC, look at cammy cr.hp) or an extremely fast one (3f, like Menat st.lk) that you can VTC into a full combo, or both (like Necalli st.lp/st.hk). The good characters are the ones that can win the round off of the sustained momentum from a VTC, and the ones that can't are bad. For example, there are characters on that tier list at the bottom (and I agree with their placement) that have good CCs/VTCs but it's worthless if you can't sustain the momentum from a lucky hit. A strong VT that you can mount a comeback with is the single biggest factor in SFV's balance. Look at how much Kolin changed just from getting a better VT. Sure she also got small buffs, but you can see from Nephew's run in the latest tournament, it's the VT2 that really changed her. He "stole" so many key rounds in his tournament win. Sim is in a similar situation in AE, with decent buffs but the primary change is the addition of a strong VT2 that put him over the line separating good/bad. There is no good character in SFV with a bad vtrigger and vice versa, though Ken comes close (though he has his own problems that are relatively unique among the cast).

Although I could dispute some of these placements, the sentiment that there's a big gulf between the top and mid tiers now is something I very much share

i think he keeps Gief in S tier simply because you can Always Guess Right still, and guessing is still better in this game than an unlimited archive of frametraps (poor Nash)

I think for a lot of characters the biggest diff is strength of the V-Triggers.

Like the power balance in that area is very wonky.

Like every now and then I think about how bad Vega's and Zeku's are.

Vega's and Zeku's are so bad and SO UNNECESSARILY bad, especially for Zeku. Neither of them are particularly strong outside of VT, and Vega especially has some of his tech nerfed despite not actually being good. For Vega, his VT2 at least seems semi-decent, at least it's better than his VT1 (well, it'd be hard to be worse). Zeku's VT2 is such a slap in the face. Who at Capcom thought that what Zeku needed was A ONE HIT VTRIGGER YOU CAN'T GET ANYTHING OFF OF THAT FUNCTIONS AS A STANCE SWITCH. Like it's comical how bad it is. Zeku's VT's biggest complaint was that you couldn't get much after it, so it was only good for one combo/hitconfirm. Their response to that was to make AN EVEN LESS MOMENTUM SUSTAINING VTRIGGER. Fucking unreal.

Also 1-use VTC combos got nerfed because of the activation double hit scaling in AE, so that's even more of a fuck you for certain vtriggers (cough Vega vt1 cough).

Looking at the tier list and yea everybody I like playing is still bad/dumpster tier

Aside from Mika who I haven't touched since S1

Cool, back to DBZ I go

No character is dumpster tier in this game. Even ~bad~ characters are not that bad relatively speaking compared to other fighting games. Theres a reason why that tier list scale goes from "S" to C+. I would say top tier in dbfz is even more stratified than SFV. Obviously, play what you want and enjoy, I'm not telling you otherwise. But out of everything bad in SFV character balance is one of the areas where it legitimately is good (with rare exceptions). I just don't want people to get the wrong idea about the tiers in SFV.

Looking at the tier list and yea everybody I like playing is still bad/dumpster tier

Aside from Mika who I haven't touched since S1

Cool, back to DBZ I go

No character is dumpster tier in this game. Even ~bad~ characters are not that bad relatively speaking compared to other fighting games. Theres a reason why that tier list scale goes from "S" to C+. I would say top tier in dbfz is even more stratified than SFV. Obviously, play what you want and enjoy, I'm not telling you otherwise. But out of everything bad in SFV character balance is one of the areas where it legitimately is good (with rare exceptions). I just don't want people to get the wrong idea about the tiers in SFV.

Also I will say that people misuse the concept of tiers and tier lists especially in this day and age when by and large tiers are not stratified and generally very compressed. Top tier characters aren't necessarily the ones that win tournaments (or at least not for a while, like zero in umvc3 didn't win a major for ages) and no one really knows what characters are capable of until it's shown. Look how long it took for an Abigail to show up last season, or Juri to show her matchup against Rashid, etc. Even Akuma, which is a pretty straightforward shoto, wasn't considered top tier last season until midway through and tokido dunked Evo. The idea that "oh I'm held back by my character" is fallacious until you reach top 32s at majors and sometimes not even then. How many people actually thought birdie was top tier until Menard won capcup? Or RyanLV and his insane-seeming but incredible team and gameplay. I am a noted advocate of Pick A Top Tier but even I am not saying that you'll do better if you do, just that you, generally speaking, will have more options when you play and less excuses if you lose, both of which are conducive to learning.

Tier lists also used to be byproducts of matchup charts. I don't know why we got away from matchup charts as a tool in favor of raw tier lists with no data. Understanding what matchups a character struggles in and why is much more helpful as a learning tool than a blanket list that says 'This char good. This char bad.'

Tier lists also used to be byproducts of matchup charts. I don't know why we got away from matchup charts as a tool in favor of raw tier lists with no data. Understanding what matchups a character struggles in and why is much more helpful as a learning tool than a blanket list that says 'This char good. This char bad.'

That's way more helpful than the kinds of generalized hypothesizing people use for tier lists on Twitter or whatever.

Some games' meta are defined by anti-char strategies, like teams who could deal with Phoenix early in mvc3. In games like that, you can't really make sense of tier lists without the matchup tables.

Tier lists also used to be byproducts of matchup charts. I don't know why we got away from matchup charts as a tool in favor of raw tier lists with no data. Understanding what matchups a character struggles in and why is much more helpful as a learning tool than a blanket list that says 'This char good. This char bad.'

That's way more helpful than the kinds of generalized hypothesizing people use for tier lists on Twitter or whatever.

Some games' meta are defined by anti-char strategies, like teams who could deal with Phoenix early in mvc3. In games like that, you can't really make sense of tier lists without the matchup tables.

Other examples for that are Cable in MvC2 and Chun/Yun in 3s.

Re: matchup charts, this is also why Infil won Manila Cup last year counterpicking Rashid with Juri 3 Bo5s in a row, then did it against post Juri buffs at Evo Japan. "But Juri is low tier~~~~~~~~~", not in that matchup she isn't.

Tier lists also used to be byproducts of matchup charts. I don't know why we got away from matchup charts as a tool in favor of raw tier lists with no data. Understanding what matchups a character struggles in and why is much more helpful as a learning tool than a blanket list that says 'This char good. This char bad.'

That's way more helpful than the kinds of generalized hypothesizing people use for tier lists on Twitter or whatever.

Some games' meta are defined by anti-char strategies, like teams who could deal with Phoenix early in mvc3. In games like that, you can't really make sense of tier lists without the matchup tables.

Other examples for that are Cable in MvC2 and Chun/Yun in 3s.

Re: matchup charts, this is also why Infil won Manila Cup last year counterpicking Rashid with Juri 3 Bo5s in a row, then did it against post Juri buffs at Evo Japan. "But Juri is low tier~~~~~~~~~", not in that matchup she isn't.

I thought of those too, but I figure the Phoenix example might be more familiar to recent converts. But goddamn, I will be okay never hearing VIPER BEAM ever again.

Having teenaged RPG leads is really cool until you stop being a teenager yourself. Do you remember being seventeen? You're a dumbass at seventeen! I wanna be saved by the guy who's twenty-seven. He's at least payed taxes. He knows how to do shit. He can drive.

I tried to duck character loyalty in DBFZ, but I no longer am willing to accept not bringing Vegeta Blue on point

The good thing about DBFZ is that my backups can be top tier as shit

The bad thing about DBFZ is that if my team is non-canon, every victory is another step toward my death. Having Goku Black on my team is actually, literally killing me because Vegeta would never work with him.